Cell 2 Soul: The Humane Health Care Blog

Together, You Can Redeem the Soul of Our Nation

In his final days, dying of pancreatic cancer, Congressman John R. Lewis had some parting words for the American people. They offer hope in these turbulent times. On the odd chance that you missed them, here is the first paragraph and a link the NY Times has made available to all interested, and sentient, readers.

One of our readers, YT, pointed me to Morgan Freeman reading John Lewis' Last Words.  It's 5 minutes long and powerfully moving with words and images.

"While my time here has now come to an end, I want you to know that in the last days and hours of my life you inspired me. You filled me with hope about the next chapter of the great American story when you used your power to make a difference in our society. Millions of people motivated simply by human compassion laid down the burdens of division. Around the country and the world you set aside race, class, age, language and nationality to demand respect for human dignity."

Link to full essay.

Let Us Honor a Singer-Songwriter Who Defied Apartheid With Music and Died This Past Week

In these sad and xenophobic days, one needs to pause and see a better, kinder side of humanity.

Consider the example of Johnny Clegg who died, age 66, this past week of pancreatic cancer in South Africa. Clegg enjoyed a lengthy, successful and highly unusual career. He was born in England to an English father and a Rhodesian mother, Muriel, a jazz singer from a Lithuanian Jewish family.

Perhaps, he was best known for the poignant, stirring 1987 anthem Asimbonanga (We have not seen him), a tribute to Nelson Mandela, who was then still in jail, and to other key figures of the anti-apartheid struggle.  (The link above may be better visualized on your screen than the image below.)

 

 

The Guardian Obit

NY Times Obit

If you want to feel better about mankind’s potential, watch the video of Clegg and Mandela (1999)

Dax Cowart (1947 - 2019)

Full NY Times Obituary.

In 1973, Dax Cowart sustained debilitating injuries from a propane gas explosion that resulted in the loss of his hands and eyes. After his immolation, Dax became a lawyer and a prominent patients’ rights advocate. In the face of what he saw as medical paternalism, he argued that patients should have more autonomy over what treatments they receive and a choice in whether they even receive any treatment at all.

He overcame his hopelessness and found a mission in trying to persuade doctors to demonstrate greater respect for their patients’ wishes.  Cowart articulated his ideas in a powerfully positive way, and influenced many young doctors in their approach to patient care.

“To make this clear,” he added, “if the same thing were to occur to me tomorrow, and knowing that I could reach this point, I would still not want to be forced to undergo the pain and agony that I had to undergo to be alive now. I would want that choice to lie entirely with myself and no others.”

Not that you have time; but here is the Dax Cowart Documentary (1 hr).

Walter Chandoha, Photographer of Cats, Dies at 98

On a winter’s evening in 1949, Walter Chandoha was walking to his three-room apartment in Astoria, Queens, when he spotted an abandoned gray kitten shivering in the snow. He put it in a pocket of his Army coat and brought it home to his wife, Maria.

His unexpected career path began with the antics this stray he called “Loco.”

See NY Times obituary.

Grandma's Hands

 by Marie Blauvelt*

"If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of your ancestors. Each is present in your body."
Thich Nhat Hanh

I have only a few photographs of my grandmother. She was camera shy, and anyway, not often available to pose. She was usually in the kitchen, or in the
garden, or in the laundry room, or walking miles from market to market with her string bags, always busy, always working, always doing. She never fussed about her appearance, even though she was attractive and had beautiful skin, large hazel eyes and wavy grey hair spilling out of whatever pins she tried to contain it with.

On her tiny shoulders and five-foot-two frame, she wore sensible garments and sturdy, comfortable shoes. Her eyeglasses were either balanced at the end of her nose, perched on top of her head, or dangling from a chain around her neck – though this never kept her from asking us, “Dove sono i miei occhiali?”

She spoke as often as possible to me in Italian, taking care to correct dialect I had picked up in listening to relatives and wincing when I spoke dialect to her in reply. She never quite learned the language of her adopted country.

The rest of Marie Blauvelt’s eloquent vignette about her nonna can be accessed here:  Download Grandma's Hands

* About the Author: Marie is a part-time library circulation clerk, part-time legal assistant, whose license plate frame reads "I'd Rather be Knitting," which usually sums things up... and worries tailgaters. She can be reached at marie.blauveltATgmail.com.

Doreen Simmons Lived in Glorious Colours

Simmons was born in England, studied theology and classics at the University of Cambridge, and taught school in Singapore. Yet, she found a remarkably different world to explore — as an expatriate sumo wrestling expert in Japan, analyzing matches in English for Japan’s public broadcasting station, for a quarter-century.

Her NY Times Obituary is fascinating. Her 2016 TEDx talk at Meiji University is a hidden gem. If you have the time check da links.

Catherine Wolf, IT researcher, ALS patient, Poet, dies at age 70

Most of us use voice recognition on our devices, but we don’t often think about where it came from. One of its developers died on February 7, 2018 after enduing  ALS for 22 years. Her NY Times obituary is instructive and inspirational. "Let us now praise a famous woman!"

Catherine G. Wolf Obit.

Catherine Wolf in healthy days

 Also see her 2014 essay “Beating the Odds” in the journal Neurology Now.

In her latter years, she turned to poetry, laboriously keying in each letter of each word by eye movements.

Squeezing each word out with gargantuan intensity
Like an ancient chiseling words in Aramaic
I will be heard!
Make no mistake.
It will take more than ALS to shut me up.

“ I DIDN’T KNOW: One of her last poems was published in 2017.

It’s May 25, my birthday!  
My family surprised me by taking me to
the running trail around the lake in Pocantico Hills.
 
The afternoon sun is glancing off the lake
like a ring of fire. I never knew I loved lakes,
so placid and calm like a Buddhist master.
Whether small, like this one or large as Lake Sunapee,
providing shelter for fuzzy goslings and their parents.
I swam with my father out in Lake Sunapee floating
on our backs as he sung “I’m forever blowing bubbles.”
 
I didn’t know how much I loved hills, running up them,
me at the end of the pack, we could see the distant town
from the highest cliff, or the glorious rush of adrenaline
cross country skiing downhill.  
 
I didn’t know that I loved snow, sliding down
College Hill on trays purloined from the cafeteria,
the full moon creating diamonds of each snowflake.
Hard to believe each snowflake is unique.
 
I never knew I loved leaves, crunching brown
beneath my feet like tiny drums, or discarded beer cans.
I don’t like comparing leaves to beer cans.
Or green above me forming a glorious canopy.
 
I didn’t know how much I loved shadows, long at sunset,
tiny at noon, the length of the shadow proportional
to the cotangent of the sun’s elevation angle from the horizon.
I have a picture of my pregnant daughter’s shadow
tilting towards the shadow of her husband.
 
I never knew how much I liked meadows, the running trail
bisecting fields of yellow and purple wildflowers.
I sometimes picked a yellow to put in curly red hair.
 
I didn’t know how I liked fog, smudging edges of
buildings like a Monet painting, making oncoming
headlights into soft glow. I don’t miss driving in fog.
 
I never knew how many things I loved until I
was in my wheelchair on the trail where I used to run.

Charity Sunshine Tillemann-Dick is a soprano, composer and presenter. A recipient of two double lung transplants, she speaks and performs frequently at concerts, conferences and events around the United States.

Her TED talk is inspirational.

She has published a book, The Encore: A Memoir in Three Acts (October 3, 2017) that she spoke about on October  on NPR^.

Scott Simon's October 1, 2017 NPR Interview of Charity Telemann-Dick is worth listening to.

If you are not familiar with Ms. Tillemann-Dick’s story you will appreciate the above links.

There are three types of Illness Narratives. Hers is a Restitution Story.

Who is Gregory Hinton?

Saturday Profile, June 24, 2017, New York Times

Gregory Everest Hinton, sometimes called “the godfather of deep learning,” is perhaps the most influential person you’ve never heard of. This profile in the NY Times is a fascinating introduction to a remarkable human life.

Hinton’s career has helped to further the fields of neurobiology, psychology, neural networks and artificial intelligence (AI). There is much in this Times profile that will interest you.

Hinton famously said: “There is no reason to think computers won’t get much smarter than us.”  Can't wait for the dumbing down Hollywood biopic!

Marion Pritchard (1920 - 2016)

Marion Pritchard, a gentile whose shock at watching Nazi soldiers storm a home for Jewish children in Amsterdam and load them into a truck for deportation inspired her to enter a clandestine world of rescuing Jews, died on Dec. 11, 2016 at her home in Washington, DC. She was 96.

Please read her moving NY Times obituary.  It's inspiring to be reminded of true heroism.  This woman's brave and quiet work is a candle in the dark.